Jean-Louis Gassée wrote a lengthy article yesterday discussing what he believes to be the future of Apple's Mac OS. With the fairly recent earnings and report (and some previous earnings) as evidence, Gassée notes the incredible amount of revenue that iOS, not Mac OS brings to the company, however he believes Apple has huge plans for Mac OS, and speculates about what might come with the introduction of the newest version of Mac OS X, Lion, which is set for a summer 2011 release.

Gassée mentions the Back to the Mac event held last October, where Apple introduced a completely revamped MacBook Air, featuring, most notably, flash storage, which make for incredible speed increases, and a much lower price point. The message Apple sent was clear, consumers loved having the ease and portability of iOS, but many still needed the power of Mac OS, and Apple was able to deliver.

This is only the beginning, according to Gassée. He believes Lion will further the transition begun with the new MacBook Air. Gassée feels that eventually the iPad and MacBook Air could become one product altogether. How would this possible? Something that has come up before, he believes Apple will be moving Mac OS to ARM architecture. Gassée notes, that something like this is no longer "rocket science" although it could prove difficult for devs to make a transition, unless Apple put a system in place to help devs along (much like they did when Macs shifted from PowerPC to Intel chips.

I wholeheartedly agree with Gassée's hypothesis. I think it is clear at this point that as 'revolutionary' as the iPad is, and as powerful as the MacBook air is, these two products are simply the beginning of a hardware transformation for Apple. It all lines up for me to think that one day these two products could be very successfully meshed, allowing for one piece of hardware to run both iOS or Mac OS, or even combine the two operating systems. I think we're a few years off from finding out for sure, but we could get our first hints if Apple is planning on moving in this direction when Lion comes out later this year.

I can see this happening. Apple loves closed markets. It fits their business model to tighten control over third-party MacOS development and distribution. The Mac-App store is only the start.

Gone are the days of focusing on power users, here are the days of Joe-users. The wild success of the iOS is due to it's simplicity, and ease of use.

I can actually see others getting on-board with this business model as well. Why drive to the store to buy a new game? Download it from Microsoft, Apple, or Google App-Stores. It's the only real competition for the horrible "cloud" idea.

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I don't think so. But if you can still get an iPod touch for $230, bring it on!

If they make the switch to ARM, does that mean iDevices would be able to be hacked to use Mac OS?

Do you own a Ipad or a macbook air? I think if you owned both like I do, you would agree with this article. I know that the ipad just wasn't enough for me as far as computing goes. I said to myself that I would love a ipad with osx on it, what I found was the macbook air is almost this. Especially with the gestures it utilizes. From what I have read about OSX Lion is that it will be utilizing the IOS multitasking feature amongst other features. I think this is proof of the merge of IOS to OSX that this article speaks of.

No, Jobs has spoke many times about the awkwardness of using a non tablet vertical touchscreen while sitting. I think we will progressively see larger touch pads on each new model in the years to come. Along with more and more gestures used for navigating your computer. I know I use this extensively on my MBA and I can't imagine not having it now.

Jobs has spoken many times of the evils of technologies he releases the next year. Lol

Very true...lol

Although, I can personally testify to the awkwardness of touchscreen computers while sitting. Your arm becomes tired quickly if you are sitting, because you are raising it above your heart to navigate the system. Touchscreen desktops only make sense and work well in standing environments that are typically business driven. A tablet works while standing because you can cradle it in your arm and keep your arms below your heart while using it, creating less resistance for circulation of your blood to your arms, therefore becoming fatigued at a much slower rate.

If you are asking yourself how I know this, it is because I work for one of the largest producers of business environment touchscreen computers in the world. This is what the studies show about touch screens computers.

You mean like how OSX already supports vastly superior multitasking than iOS, why would they want to make OSX multitasking anyway like iOS, it's a massive step backwards.

IOS multitasking is way more efficient for the basic use of 90% of the applications a person uses. It stores them in a suspended state in your ram, using much less cpu cycles in the process of doing it. The alternative is to have a program running in the background using up unnecessary cpu cycles. It will not be a full adoption of IOS, just a adaptation of it for OSX. Programs that need to run and not be suspended still will run in the background. The ones that don't will be cached in the ram for quick access. This all comes together even more when you add in SSD that can truly be virtual memory when you have exhausted all of your on board ram.

OS X Lion is going to be incredible, bigger than Leopard (hopefully)! If Apple does move to an integration that would sweet. Maybe it would open others up to buying a Mac, MBP, MB, or MBA. I'm excited to see what they have in-store for us

Do you own a Ipad or a macbook air? I think if you owned both like I do, you would agree with this article. I know that the ipad just wasn't enough for me as far as computing goes. I said to myself that I would love a ipad with osx on it, what I found was the macbook air is almost this. Especially with the gestures it utilizes. From what I have read about OSX Lion is that it will be utilizing the IOS multitasking feature amongst other features. I think this is proof of the merge of IOS to OSX that this article speaks of.

This idea reaks of FAIL. Why condense two GREAT selling devices into one SUPER device?? I would like an iOS iPad that can perform like a MBA, but at the same time, the MBA is a laptop and the iPad is a tablet. In the corp world, i can only see pharma sales reps utilizing an iPad. Place your orders via Citrix or VPN connects and viola! I know the Boston Fed Court is ramping up for iPhones and iPads for the Judges (which we will pay for). Why would they need iPads or iPhones?? i can see NCIC db's being pumped to the judges chambers and their bench, but not via iPad for $500+. Dell optiplex boxes or a WYSE terminal would be better solutions/$$.
Offtopic rant ... done.

I know the form factor of the ARM processor is much smaller than anything inside of the MBP or the Air, however, wouldn't it make more sense for Apple to urge Intel to continue developing smaller chips in hopes that they could drop an Intel chip into an iDevice AND a MacBook? Then iOS could be redesigned for the Intel architecture and it would eliminate redundancies.

For a while weren't there rumors of the new macbooks/macbook airs having a glass "keyboard" if you will that displayed different keys based on what application was open and was essentially a giant touchscreen that you used to navigate the main screen? Hopefully this is the future and I think Apple has the creativity/engineering chops to pull it off. Think, iPad as the actual keyboard/navigation tool with a lid to display everything, running OSX. Yes. just....Yes.

Those two devices would make one sick computer. i dont even think that you would need to make either one after that because it would be a full OS, but that would kill the ipad app store and i do like having some of those apps because they are much easier to use sometimes

The problem with modmyi is that like slashdot, it really is not representative of large segments of the market and the users that actually spend real money. By that, I am not referring to Apple's overall retail sales of certain products like the iPod or iPhone. I am saying that the one off comments by the people that buy 1 of those products, and the fact that they congregate on this forum, is not representative of Apples targeted audience in other product lines. Apple is not going to abandon entire markets such as Print and Graphic design, on which it has survived for long periods of time and already enjoys a near monopoly, by turning its destop operating system into Frankenstein for the illiterate mobile masses. It may incorporate those things which make sense and add value to the platform, but I cannot see a single OS that harmonizes across very dissimilar tools in the way being purported by the author of the news post.

I heard some rumor of an ARM version of Windows and I think this would be very crucial for Apple to keep growing in the computer market. I love Mac OS but I like knowing that if I need windows I can run a VM or just duel boot win7. Besides that I think people having the option will feel safer switching over since they can always go back to windows if they despise Mac OS.